SQL Server Support Policy for Virtualization and Failover Clustering updated
Another great news from Microsoft, SQL Support policy is updated. SQL was supported on VM but now building SQL Failover Cluster on VMs is supported. Check this on CSS SQL Server Engineers
Support policy for Microsoft SQL Server products that are running in a hardware virtualization environment
One fairly controversial aspect to this policy was our support (actually non-support is a better word) for “guest” failover clustering. We didn’t support installing SQL Server failover clustering in a virtual machine. Well this policy is now changed effective immediately as updated in the article.
The article now contains the following new wording on this topic:
Guest Failover Clustering is supported for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 in a virtual machine for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, and SVVP certified configurations provided both of the following requirements are met:
The Operating System running in the virtual machine (the “Guest Operating System”) is Windows Server 2008 or higher
The virtualization environment meets the requirements of Windows 2008 Failover Clustering as documented at The Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters.
Guest Failover Clustering is when you create a SQL Server failover cluster inside a virtual machine where the nodes are running as a virtual machine.
The article on Windows 2008 Failover Clustering has 2 requirements:
- All hardware and software components must be meet “Certified for Windows Server 2008” logo requirements.
- The configuration must pass the Validate test in the Failover Clusters Management snap-in. This is run inside the virtual machine.
